Stuck In Customs

I found this interesting page that talks about some of the design process and art iterations behind the 360.

I sent this to a bunch of friends in email and it really confused them.  I don’t know why.  If I could figure out how to get one of these Wooden Mirrors into my house, it would entertain me for the rest of my life.

This is a great game. I played it deep into one night and finished the single player campaign. It was really a fantastic and immersive experience. It is easily one of the most impressive games so far for the 360. The online experience is a kinda donkey, but it’s very nice and smooth when it works well.

As I am getting ready for the Game Developer’s Conference next week I found this video from last year’s GDC when Will Wright gave his keynote. I think the guy is a genius… judge for yourself.

This video makes me feel better about all the stupid things I have done in life.

So back in 2002 I started playing this game called Eve Online. I don’t have time for deep MMO experiences any more, but it was amazing while it lasted. Together with Will and Craig, we ran an in-game corproration called Taggart Transdimensional and we had a great time. We were, by far, the richest corp in the galaxy, the first to build cruisers, the first to build battleships, etc. We ran the corp from a different point of view and our corp attracted some of the best and brightest in the gaming world. In fact, that’s how I met Gustaf. He used to give the philosophy tests to incoming recruits (yes, we had essay tests requirements).

I was being interviewed for a magazine recently (EON) about all of this, and I found a bunch of old Eve pictures I have uploaded to Flickr. I had forgotten about some of the great art we made for the corp and some of the great experiences we had. Here is a little sampling:

First, here are a few pictures of the still secretive Jovians. Our corporate space station was visited by five Jovians that arrived in their behemoth battleships and they were calling for Ragnar (me) to come out. I actually spent 95% of my Eve-time in space stations controlling our corporation, treaties, alliances, trade, wars, etc.

These Jovians were actually all the guys at CCP that run the game. They were demanding a special item that I had come in posession of, an elite Mining Laser that I was sold. Apparently, this item had slipped into the game via a reporter, who sold it to some random guy, and that random guy came and found me because he knew I was the richest in the game. I paid a crazy price for the mining laser (about a billion ISK, which was a lot for the time), and then I promptly outfitted one TTI Apocalypse battleship with this mining laser and took an absurd screenshot of the entire fleet out sucking an asteroid belt dry of the most valuable ore. The new mining laser was INFO highlighted so everyone could see what TTI was using as our standard mining package, even though everyone else was using regular mining lasers. This caused amazing controversy, since they were sure we cheated to get these lasers… but I had no idea the origins of this mining laser. So rather than being jerks and just snatching it back, the CCP guys created an RP event and five of them appeared as Jovians outside our space station, asking for their property back.

They whisked me away and teleported me and my Raven battleship deep into Jovian space and negotiated a trade with me. I still can’t talk about the trade, but they ended up with their Jovian mining laser back. Here are a few pics of their battleships and some of the Jovians themselves I grabbed during the surprise event.

We also had a load of fun with all the propaganda and the wars with other corporations. There was one philosophically opposite corporation called Endless Corp headed by this guy HellGremlin. We ended up doing all sorts of great capers together. Here are some of the pictures I still have left over from the proaganda… Some of these caused a lot of controversy because they were Nazi-related, but it was all in good fun, just like the real Nazis.

We also had a big load of advertisements and promotional pictures. There is some very creative stuff in here.

It’s been a big month for the 360 and there are finally some really good games coming out for it. I picked up both Burnout and Ghost Recon the day they came out and both are amazing.

Burnout is BY FAR the best action racing video game of all time. The best action RPG car game is of course Happy Car, but since that is not out yet (ahem), I have to spend my free time playing this one. If you have played other race car games and think they are all pretty much the same, then you have to try Burnout – they have effectively re-invented the whole genre.

One of the coolest new features of this version is the online play and the pre-race hype camera. The camera jumps around to 2 of the other racers, plays dramatic music and says things like, “This is your Rival! He took you down twice last race!” or “Here is the point leader – set your sights on him!” The effect is very nice because it personalizes what is otherwise a sterile multiplayer matching of random online gamers. It causes a lot of chatter too… I kept hearing everyone talk about who they are gonna gang up on because they are winning, or ad-hoc allies are created to get back at a rivalry.

Maybe I like the speed in this game because I am tired of driving to the convenience store in my Prius in an electric whirrr of 20 MPH to pick up some diapers and half-and-half.

My thumbs have moved to a new level of carpal tunnel disorder, which really isn’t that horrible of a thing because you have sweet memories left over.

Fight Night Round 3 for the 360 game is great, and definitely not a button-masher. One unique thing about the game is there is no UI at all while you are fighting. You don’t have any UI representation of fatigue, power, stamina – nothing – you just have to watch how your boxer moves and listen to the commentary to figure out how its going.

I’ve gotten about 800 achievement points on my GamerCard. I don’t know why I am so into that stupid GamerCard, but I find myself doing things I would not normally do just to get more points.

Here are a few screenshots. The graphics are the best of any 360 game so far. Here are a few screenshots. That second one looks like a black guy beating up an Arab, but that is probably my own Rorschach reaction.

After the Jester 5K I walked over to get into my Prius, and I found it parked right by two other identical Priai.  Only in Austin…

I like my Prius, although I do think of it largely as a golf cart with Windows.

The pain value of the run was somewhere between Abu Grab and listening to George Clooney speak his mind.

As we started the race, the announcer said this is the hilliest 5K in the world, and I don’t doubt it. It starts out with a half mile ascent straight up this 20% graded hill and that is the easiest hill of the run. I felt good because some young 18 year old punk shot out ahead and made it to the top of the first hill, but he petered out and I passed him about four miles into it.

I finished in under 30 minutes and in the top 25% of the field. The people that beat me are as follows:

• A gentleman that worked for the overland mail service in Kenya
• A Winter Olympian from Austria who cluttered my path with syringes
• A woman with an inexplicably large ass sporting a ponderous amount of junk in the trunk that somehow stayed in front of me the entire time, making me feel like a brotha in da club.

Here are some pictures from the event, including one of me doing the running man pose in the backyard while Ethan grabbed a shot.

There was also a bike race afterwards that I was not in. I spent that hour passed out in a pile of leaves. Here is a picture of the finish line about 45 minutes into the race, when more people were still finishing. I was just glad not to be last, which I fully expected to be. Oh in that picture above, that young guy tried to pass me in the end but I held him off only because there was a good Hans Zimmer tune on my iPod.